The Principal's Handbook

Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about navigating other people's emotions and helping your staff to do the same. I wanted to do this episode because I feel like this is a big issue in schools that I've seen are the [00:01:00] emotions of teachers and other staff members and navigating that it can cause a lot of stress on principals.
And so when I'm thinking about how to help principals, Maintain their own well being and make the job sustainable. I really think about how do we manage our own emotions around other people when they're very emotional and how do we help guide our teachers to do the same? Because I really feel strongly about the fact that, we teach students these skills about.
Emotional intelligence and navigating our emotions. , my counselor that I worked with, , at the last elementary school I was at, she was actually teaching students cognitive behavior therapy, the idea that your thoughts create your emotions and actions, which is what I teach in coaching.
And I remember when we talked about that, I was so excited to hear that we're teaching kids that because I didn't learn that until a couple of years ago as an adult. And so I feel like. The teachers that we work with, most of them also don't know those emotional regulation skills. And so [00:02:00] schools can be a place with heightened emotions from staff and it makes it very stressful.
It can mess with the morale of the school and just make it a hard place to work. Not only for you as the principal, but for other teachers as well. And so I thought this would be a good episode to address. How do we navigate other people's emotions? And then how do we help our teachers and our staff members with that?
, so I'm going to refer to teachers, but this could be really any staff members. It could be your classified staff. , if you are noticing that as well, in my experience, I noticed it, , with everybody, with , a certain time of the school year, there's this ebb and flow of emotions that come in where emotions are heightened and then everybody's fine.
Right. And so I actually have a lesson on this in my course, a sustainable principle, because I feel like. The ebbs and flows of the school year is one of the challenges of being a principal. You just have to know what those times of the year are where people are highly emotional and you have to know how to [00:03:00] navigate that.
Today I'm going to give you some tips on how to navigate other people's emotions and then ways that you can share this with your teachers and support them in doing the same. So my first tip is to understand what emotions you see other people are feeling.
This is really taking the time and being reflective. A lot of times I see teachers that are upset and they're mad. And my first thought is, okay, they're, they're mad. And I have judgments about that, but you have to understand what the actual emotion is. There's way more emotions than just mad, sad, disappointed, right?
We have to get to the root of it. And you have to know also that everybody is entitled to feel however they want, and you can't take that personal. So it's important that you make it a priority to actually understand what's happening with staff. And this works with parents too, if you have parents who are highly emotional when you're talking to them.
Um, but understand what's going on with them with regular check ins, open communication. I remember teachers would come to me [00:04:00] upset and it was like very, um, it could feel very defeating at times because I thought I'm really trying everything I can to make this a culture where people, you know, feel valued and heard.
And a teacher said to me, we come to you upset because we know that you'll listen. And so then I realized when people come to you upset, you have to recognize it as a sign that you've created a safe space for vulnerability and trust that people can come talk to you, which is amazing. But sometimes that can also be really hard as a principal because you're navigating so many different emotions.
So it's a good thing. You just have to really be able to navigate all those emotions from the people coming to you. So first, again, you just want to understand what emotions people are feeling. Listen when they come talk to you, truly listen, don't get defensive, but just hear what they're saying and try to gather, um, gather information about what's going on with your staff in the building.
Then my second tip is to empathize with [00:05:00] their emotions, but don't make it your problem. And I say this because you have to be really careful. So for me, I'm a super empathetic person, and I think a lot of educators are. And sometimes with that empathy, I make everybody's emotions become my problem. And that's not a good place to be in either.
So you want to practice having genuine empathy by trying to understand why people feel a certain way. But , use that empathy to approach people with compassion rather than judgment or criticism. So that empathy is a great thing for, you know, listening to people, hearing them out, coming at them , with compassion rather than judgment.
But you also have to empathize while maintaining boundaries. Okay, you don't have to take on responsibility for fixing everyone's emotional state. Our emotional state comes from our thoughts. Our thoughts create our emotions, which create our actions. So you cannot change somebody else's thoughts, but you [00:06:00] can try to understand what's going on and you can empathize with them.
So it's really important that you empathize. And then my third tip is decide how you want to respond to others emotions. So when people come to you really emotional, it's important that you get to decide and deliberately choose how you want to show up when someone else is emotional.
You don't have to match their emotion. You actually, as the leader, need to stay grounded and avoid getting caught up in the heightened emotions. So So what you want to do is you want to be aware of just the overall emotions happening in your building, and then plan your thoughts ahead of time to shape your own emotions and actions.
Because like I said, your thoughts create your emotions and actions. So you get to plan your thoughts ahead of time, and you want to have thoughts, , that come from empathy and not judgment, because it's going to impact how you think and feel about those people, and then how you act on it. So you have to consider how you [00:07:00] want to think about the person and the situation.
So I'm going to give an example to think about. In schools, I think a big one is when you have a new initiative in your building, right? And the. Big one I saw in elementary school is we switched to the science of reading and that was a really tricky thing because a lot of teachers were teaching and basically with the science of reading it was like we've been doing it wrong for 20 years.
You know, they've had this research longer than that since the 80s and 90s and we haven't changed our practice with that research and when that came out a lot of people took that personal like it. I've messed up kids. I've been doing things wrong. Like it was a personal attack on them, right? And it's hard because we take education so personally and people are so passionate about it.
But what I've noticed is it created this super emotionally charged environment where people wanted to be right about how they used to teach reading and People wanted to, , argue about what the right way was and, and, and there [00:08:00] was a lot of resistance and pushback. And I just give this as an example because for me as the leader, it was really important that I understood how people, I understood how people were feeling.
It wasn't a personal attack on me that I wanted them to teach, you know, using the science of reading. I realized from listening to the teachers. And really empathize with them that it was more of them criticizing themselves and feeling like they weren't good enough as a teacher. And how could they have not known this?
How could they have been teaching like this for years? And it's quote unquote wrong, right? And not good for kids. So, You have to empathize with where those emotions coming from. And so when I learned that that's really how teachers were feeling after hearing them out and talking to them, it really changed my approach to how I respond to their emotions instead of, I didn't take it personally when they were upset about the curriculum or teaching based on the science of reading.
I really was deliberate about how I wanted to [00:09:00] think about the teachers and deliberate about how I wanted to address all of their emotions because I was I wanted to address the motions, but I also didn't want to make it my problem. We had to move forward. We had to do this initiative, right? The research was showing this is what's best for kids.
So I had to acknowledge the emotions, but not make it the problem that then I'm stuck in, we have to fix this for the teachers, right? I can't fix their emotions about it. I can just be empathetic and decide how I'm going to respond moving forward. And one of the ways I responded moving forward was realizing that teachers needed more training.
That was something that I, as their leader, wanted to show up with is more training to educate them and help them work through this process. I also was really intentional as a leader to validate their feelings, to be vulnerable with them and say, you know, I taught the same way. I don't have all the answers.
We're learning together. So all of these things are really important when you're dealing with High stakes emotions, [00:10:00] which goes into my fourth tip, which is that you really want to model emotional regulation for your staff. You want to be the person who's very grounded and can show them healthy ways to handle stress and challenging situations.
Show them that you're in it together, but you're the grounded one leading the charge, right? You don't want to get caught up in the emotions. It's easy, especially if let's say you didn't agree with the initiative and maybe it's coming from, , central office, you could easily get caught up in the emotions with staff.
But remember as the leader, you want to be grounded, handle your emotions well, and be transparent about how you handle those emotions. You know, I was transparent with my teachers. Where I would always talk about, I focus on what I can control. There are things I can't control.
I focus on what I can control and I don't get upset about it. I also taught my staff, the team method that our thoughts create our emotions and actions, and we had conversations about that. I gave teachers and staff [00:11:00] specific examples of how I navigated difficult emotional situations, and I really tried to spend time as a staff teaching them how to manage their emotions, which is where I want to shift to now, which is how do you actually share this with staff and, you know, I, I was lucky because when I was doing all this, I was going through my certification for life coaching, but I truly believe that any leader can do this, which is why I wanted to do this episode, but you can model how you're navigating the stressful situations and how you're doing it in a grounded way.
Another tip I have is create structured outlets for emotional processing. Like I said, teachers being able to come talk to you is huge, but even having staff meetings where maybe they have, I did a little exit slip in my staff meetings and I got this from somebody else, , where they would share what is going well.
And what they need support in and areas of frustration. And so establishing just those temperature checks where I can see, like, What are their [00:12:00] concerns? Every staff meeting was really helpful. Even having some times where they just shared at a table, , about what's going on that there may be stressed about and helping them navigate that.
Okay. Let them process those emotions. It doesn't mean you have to take away whatever is causing the emotions. It's just hearing them and understanding to make sure that you're supporting them in the way that you can.
, also I think providing professional development on emotional intelligence and stress management is huge. I used to use my school counselor for this. She would help us. , she would do some things with staff on emotional intelligence. She talked to them about how their thoughts created their emotions and actions, and I did as well.
But just. Giving them that PD on emotional intelligence, because I think it's so easy to forget that when we get stressed out and then create designated spaces and times for staff to decompress together and process difficult situations together. We've even had very emotional [00:13:00] situations where I had a teacher who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
He ended up passing away. It was a very, very tough time on the staff. And so. We created spaces where they could process those emotions together before it even happened. , then he passed away just because we knew that staff needed to process this. It was really hard on everybody. So having times as a whole staff doing small group things, , just where staff can talk to a counselor or just.
Even me, you know, as the leader, they were able to talk to so that we could navigate the situation together. And then another tip is to develop proactive coping strategies. So work with your staff to develop proactive coping strategies. We already know that we're going to be stressed as educators. We already know those times of year that everybody's stressed.
As this episode's coming out, it's not about spring break time, right? This is a time of year where people get stressed. They're so ready for break. And so we know that the stress triggers are there. [00:14:00] And so we want to help staff have a plan in place. Help teachers focus on what they can control, encourage them to focus on their self care practices like taking breaks, setting boundaries, maintaining work life balance.
When they heard those things from me as the school leader, I think it helped so much. For them to understand that they can actually do it. I used to have lots of conversations with teachers about setting boundaries on when they're communicating with parents, because I'd have teachers communicating all weekend, all evening with parents.
, I would talk to them a lot about, you have to maintain work life balance. We work hard when we're here, you go home and you spend time with your family. All of these things are really important that you can model and you can practice and talk, talk about with your staff. Also provide resources and techniques for managing common emotional challenges with parents or students.
I did this a lot. If I had a parent who was very, , emotionally charged, who would come in angry. [00:15:00] One, I always made sure I was there to support the teacher, but I always prep them for conversations ahead of time. If we knew that they were going to be talking to a difficult parent who might get really emotional on the phone.
The teacher and I would sometimes call together or I would prep that teacher for the conversation and we'd talk about it. You know, you can't take it personally. Here's some talking points and kind of talk about how to stay grounded in the conversation. So being that support there as well and then guiding teachers and creating personal action plans for high stress periods of the year.
Okay, so we know that this is a high stress period. Period of the year. Like, what are you doing personally to take care of yourself? What are you doing personally? To check in with your emotions and how you're feeling. So these are all things you can do with staff. I'm going to create a link in the show notes with a guide of some of the activities that I did with staff that might be really helpful for you.
So you can click that in the show notes and use that with your staff. I'd also [00:16:00] be, . I'd also be happy to talk to you if you want some suggestions one on one. , I do free consultations. So if you want to meet and talk about how you could integrate some of this stuff with your staff, I'd be happy to talk to you and talk about how you could do that.
But those are some suggestions I have for you today. I hope that you found this helpful. I hope that you really take these focus on regulating your own emotions around these high stress situations, and then help navigate this with your staff model for them and help give them tips to do the same
If you're interested in making the job as a principal more sustainable for the future, where you feel like you can have total work life balance, you're able to do this job long term,
make sure you click the link in the show notes and check out my course, the sustainable principle. I'm so excited. I created this course to help principals create practices , that are going to sustain them in their role as a principal. So if you're struggling with work life balance, you feel like you're working all the time.
You feel like you'll never get that balance, or you don't even know what that would [00:17:00] look like to have time at work and time at home to be separate. Make sure you check that out. And also, if you love the show, if you're listening on Apple, scroll down in your app and leave a review. Keep in mind, you have the power to shape your life according to the mindset you choose.
I hope you have a great week and I'll see you back here next time.